In a blog post, the president of the BSA expressed concerns that the Stop …

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After initially coming out in favor of the Stop Online Piracy Act, the controversial and sweeping copyright protection measure now moving through Congress, the Business Software Alliance now seems to be reversing itself as the legislation progresses. In a blog post on the BSA's website today, BSA president and CEO Robert Holleyman expressed concern about the direction SOPA is taking and its potential impact beyond going after criminal infringement, and urged Congress to make changes to the bill.

"Valid and important questions have been raised about the bill," Holleyman wrote. "As it now stands [ ] it could sweep in more than just truly egregious actors. Due process, free speech, and privacy are rights cannot be compromised."

He also noted the potential impact of filtering and monitoring provisions being proposed as part of SOPA, and wrote that the security and reliability of the Internet might suffer from unintended consequences. "BSA has long stood against filtering or monitoring the Internet," he stated. He urged the House Judiciary Committee to tighten and narrow the scope of the bill's language and to address "reasonable questions" about the potential filtering provisions.

SOPA currently contains provisions that would require Internet service providers to block access to foreign sites that infringe on copyright material, "including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name’s Internet Protocol address." Search engine providers would be required to block infringing sites from appearing in their results, and ad networks and payment processors would also have to stop working with blacklisted sites.

Holleyman's comments today come less than a month after he issued a press release hailing SOPA—though that initial praise did come with some moderation. "As Congress continues its work on this legislation," Holleyman said in October, "it will be important to strike the right balance between two sets of considerations — enabling effective action against online pirates, while also ensuring the law does not impede technology innovation or the evolution of software and the Internet, which are critical engines for future economic growth."

When even the BSA, a powerful and staunchly pro-copyright-enforcement body, thinks a bill like this goes way too far, it's bad news for SOPA backers in the media business.

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Sean Gallagher
Sean is Ars Technica's IT and National Security Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland. Emailsean.gallagher@arstechnica.com//Twitter@thepacketrat

""while also ensuring the law does not impede technology innovation or the evolution of software and the Internet""

There's the crux of the issue between content holders and technology innovators. Sometimes they work had in hand while other times they are at loggerheads. In this case there is 'be careful what you wish for' remorse finally dawning on the collective business community.

The BSA members don't give a damn about ethics and "doing the right thing".. they just see the potential that SOPA might backfire and cause a revolt that would drag in its members as collateral damage and hurt their Bottom Line.

They're worried about protecting themselves, not freedom of speech or any other ethical principle. The BSA is not comprised of ethical people.

Judging from all the rhetoric I'm seeing, wouldn't somebody take this law before the courts as unconstitutional as soon as it was signed?

The day I see this happening is the day I call both my lawyer friend and the ACLU. and if possible I will be taking this to court.I am an Artist and I am freely sharing my music on the Internet.I am actually sharing 6 albums plus unreleased live and studio stuff from various bands I formed from the 1970's - Present.I use the normal means such as Facebook,Myspace,Website,etc and I also do filesharing on public trackers so I am on TPB and other public sites.SOPA will go against my 1st Amendment Rights and yes I will look into bringing it to Court.SOPA is sickening and those who brought it forth should never be voted into an office again no matter what Party or belief they come from.They are all guilty in my eyes of selling out our freedom for a quick buck.Fucking Assholes !!! Fix our Economy and stop Arguing you bunch of useless people.

This is promising news, but that's all it is right now. The legislators backing SOPA have already summarily dismissed the objections of knowledgeable tech experts and are clearly hostile to the bill's opponents such as when they attacked Google last week. They've seemed pretty set on pushing this through. Hopefully this and the news of high profile lawmakers voicing their concerns will get them moving in the right direction, but I'm ready to be disappointed....

Judging from all the rhetoric I'm seeing, wouldn't somebody take this law before the courts as unconstitutional as soon as it was signed?

The day I see this happening is the day I call both my lawyer friend and the ACLU. and if possible I will be taking this to court.

Your country needs more like you. <- 'Nuff said.

Problem with this plan: you would need some sort of standing (demonstrable harm) that occurred to you, personally. And it has to be an amount of harm sufficient to go directly to a federal court (>$75,000), or else you have to suffer through a few levels of state court first.

This is part of why it took so long for the EFF to sue over AT&T/NSA spying on us- they had to have standing, not just proof that the government and AT&T broke the law/constitution. Of course, Congress promptly passed a law making it retroactively legal for AT&T to do so (which clearly violates clause 3 of Article I, section 9 as well as rule of law), causing the case to be dropped. A followup case (Jewel v. NSA) died after the gov pulled the "National Security" card as a reason why the case shouldn't proceed.

Not to worry. The ACLU and the EFF are all about finding good cases with standing.

(BSA) " Wait a minute ... if people can't download software illegally and install it... then we can't entice disgruntled employees to call our hotlines so we can go in and bust these companies with licensing fines. Holy Crap, our whole business model will be ruined! FFFFUUUUU"

So, this is how the politicians go about creating jobs in the US? By doing everything in their power to run businesses out of the US.

Seriously, if this passes how many DNS servers and search engines and ad companies and payment processing companies will either move out of the US or be replaced by companies already outside of the US?

Oh, but wait, we will still have all of the old, lazy artist who wrote a song back in 1973 and have to make sure that their great,-great-great-grandchildren get paid for it, or more accurately the big media companies have to make sure that they can exploit artist for over a century after they are dead.

Judging from all the rhetoric I'm seeing, wouldn't somebody take this law before the courts as unconstitutional as soon as it was signed?

The day I see this happening is the day I call both my lawyer friend and the ACLU. and if possible I will be taking this to court.

Your country needs more like you. <- 'Nuff said.

Problem with this plan: you would need some sort of standing.

I did not mean it literally.I meant it as a person actually getting up and doing something about it, fighting back _with_ a plan.Reading what he wrote you can see he is mad (rightly so) at the potential damage of this disastrous proposed law and has thought about what he will _do_ about it and refuses to bend over and just take it.

The reason we open sourced our work is because we wanted to give anyone who wanted the tools to fight back to have the tools to fight back... people like GoreProd who wont just give up.

These are the musicians this BS law is supposed to be "helping", to see them say "no SOPA, not in my f'ing name *sshole" is commendable. We wish there were more like GP taking a stand.

I agree with the sentiment that the BSA is just as morally bankrupt as the other publisher's associations, and that their motives for backing way from SOPA are completely selfish. Becoming the enemy of my enemy doesn't make them my friend, but software's contribution to the GDP rivals all other publishing industries combined, and the BSA certainly has the necessary clout in Washington to kill SOPA. I'm doubtful that will happen though. Just like the DMCA, the MPAA and RIAA will eventually make small concessions until the tech industry caves. In their self-destructive delusion that control==profit, they will continue to use their media might and money to push this through in some form or another. It doesn't matter if it takes a year or a decade, they'll keep at it until they get what they want.

As much as I strongly dislike the BSA, just because both you and I don't agree with them, that doesn't mean they are unethical.

No, it is their extortionist actions against companies who cannot provide the exact forms of proof of purchase they have decided are required that mean that.

I sort of have a feeling this whole lobbying effort by Big Content is only half the story here. I believe there is a lot of support for this type of law internally from the government itself so they can make quick work of sites like wikileaks, and Anonymous hangouts. After all, if it's good to protect businesses, it's even better to protect the country.

If this goes ahead even with all the opposition arrayed against it, that would be telling IMO.

Judging from all the rhetoric I'm seeing, wouldn't somebody take this law before the courts as unconstitutional as soon as it was signed?

The day I see this happening is the day I call both my lawyer friend and the ACLU. and if possible I will be taking this to court.

Your country needs more like you. <- 'Nuff said.

Problem with this plan: you would need some sort of standing.

I did not mean it literally.I meant it as a person actually getting up and doing something about it, fighting back _with_ a plan.Reading what he wrote you can see he is mad (rightly so) at the potential damage of this disastrous proposed law and has thought about what he will _do_ about it and refuses to bend over and just take it.

The reason we open sourced our work is because we wanted to give anyone who wanted the tools to fight back to have the tools to fight back... people like GoreProd who wont just give up.

These are the musicians this BS law is supposed to be "helping", to see them say "no SOPA, not in my f'ing name *sshole" is commendable. We wish there were more like GP taking a stand.

Thanks a lot MAFIAAfire.My lawyer friend will know all the legal code and so will the ACLU where I live.And I am a pretty well known guy in my Punk Rock Scene and should also be able to sign on a bunch of local friends to also back me.It may hep when you have 30 or more different local acts all standing by what I say for my little Court case.But hopefully it won't happen.And whether it does or does not happen I wonder if thee schmucks can be investigated financially ? Are there public records that show what donations,etc they got or are getting ? We need some investigative reporting for each member of this SOPA Bill.Maybe there is someone on this board who knows law or what to do and will get that info.

In my humble opinion if the recording and film industries don't like what is happening digitally, they can always go back to vinyl records or 70 mm film can they not? Yeah but then they wouldn't make the big bucks.They lost their case when the industry endorsed digitizing entertainment. Sucks to be pig headed greedy narcissists.